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Tag: Tactical Pen

For some time I had been carrying around the Smith And Wesson Tactical Stylus Pen. My main reason for doing so, was my lament about the lack of good, HQ pens in the world today.

This pen also featured a rubber-like tip, which can be used as a passive pointing device on capacitive tablet screens. I think that my main problem with the Smith And Wesson Pen was, that the formulation of this rubber caused it to have a high coefficient of friction, even against the surface of a tablet screen. So it could be used for tapping, but not for swiping.

Also, being a “Tactical Pen” meant, that the Smith And Wesson had a pointed hard end that could be used for self-defense. The size and mass of this pen was great enough to make this use plausible. But then, the size and mass of this pen also made it slightly awkward to be wearing normally, in socially calm scenarios.

I have the tendency to fidget and play with my pens, which in this case meant that for years, I would turn this pen around in my hand, and rub on the rubbery, stylus-end with my thumb. This habit eventually caused the stylus nib to break. At that time I found out that I could no longer order replacement nibs, because that type is no longer being manufactured. The type of stylus nib which also had the flaw which I just mentioned.

And so what I did next was to order a complete replacement. Once that nib has broken, you would presumably also need to replace the whole pen. I replaced mine with a Schrade Tactical Stylus Pen.

The Schrade is similar to the Smith And Wesson, with two main differences:

The Schrade has a correctly-formulated rubber-like nib, which can be used to swipe on a tablet screen as much as to tap on it, because its nib has a low coefficient of friction.

The Schrade is a smaller object, which fits more elegantly into a shirt-pocket, the way a pen is supposed to fit. And this also means that although the Schrade also has a pointed hard end meant for self-defense, its mass is too low to allow it actually to be used for self-defense, in any way I can imagine. You would effectively be hitting the other person with ‘a Popsicle-stick’, that happens to be pointy at one end.

However, I was never really keen at obtaining a self-defense weapon. I only ever wanted an HQ pen. And so for now, the Schrade replacement pen suits me fine. It remains to be seen, whether the Schrade will also last as long as the Smith And Wesson did, under normal use, and while being played with in my hands forever.

One step which I took with the Schrade however, was to buy a small package of replacement nibs for it, even before I had received the pen. It could be that the replacements for this one will stop being manufactured at some point in the future as well, and in that case I will have several already in my drawer, waiting to be attached.